


Wish I Wasn't Me

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Betrayal, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:36:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27700801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: Enamoured with the mysterious O, Yasmin Khan is tempted away from her friends, the TARDIS, and everything she knows. But when the scales fall from her eyes, is there a way out for her? Will her friends be there to save her from a dream-turned-nightmare? Or is she irredeemable and alone?
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan, Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair, Yasmin Khan & Ryan Sinclair, Yasmin Khan/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> An extension of [this drabble.](https://universe-on-her-shoulders.tumblr.com/post/631048999620788224/153-with-yaz-and-the-master-maybe-she-stuck-with)
> 
> Warnings for discussions of abuse.

“I don’t want this anymore,” Yaz admitted, her voice shaking with barely-surpassed fear as she looked around the restaurant they were seated in. One entire wall was made of glass, and the cityscape of Paris twinkled outside, with the Eiffel Tower sparkling in myriad golden hues that matched the champagne Yaz was sipping apprehensively. Until a few moments prior, they had been surrounded by patrons enjoying a quiet meal with their families, friends and colleagues, until the Master had accused one of the waiters of eyeing Yaz up and turned his Tissue Compression Eliminator on first the staff, then their fellow diners in one of the fits of jealous, homicidal rage he was increasingly prone to. Terrified sobs and occasional crashes were now emanating from the kitchen, where the one remaining chef was preparing their desserts on pain of death – both his own, and that of his family. Across from her, the Master froze, a forkful of steak suspended halfway to his mouth as he looked at her with confusion. 

“Don’t want what?” he asked with a nervous laugh, lowering his fork. “The food? You’re right.” He moved with lightning speed; snatching up first her plate and then his own and frisbeeing both across the restaurant, laughing in manic glee as they hit the wall and shattered, sending vegetables and meat spraying across the plush carpet. From the kitchen came a shriek of terror and the clatter of dropped crockery, but Yaz didn’t so much as flinch as she forced herself to keep her composure. “It’s not up to much.”

“No,” Yaz bit down on her lip, her eyes brimming with tears as she dropped her gaze to the snow-white tablecloth. She’d tried hard for this dinner; she was wearing a low-cut red gown that the Master had picked out for her, with a matching lipstick that felt sticky and unpleasant on her lips. Neither of the two items were very much ‘her’; she felt shivery and exposed by the dress, which clung to her uncomfortably tightly, and she was eating with near-comedic care, wary of smudging her makeup. She’d rehearsed conversation topics in her head on the way here, and managed to _ooh_ and _ahh_ at all the right moments when the Master recounted grad fables of war and death and mass-murder, which he threw around like jokes. But now… “I don’t want this anymore. Us.”

“Are you saying…” the Master’s voice, to her considerable surprise, was soft and afraid and impossibly genuine, his eyes wide with shock. “You want this to end?”

“I…” she looked up at him and was shocked to see tears in his eyes. Was that part of his game? Was he sincere? Could he really care about her? Maybe she was about to make a terrible mistake; after all, it was undoubtedly her fault he’d lost his temper just now; perhaps she’d led the waiter on, or given off some unspoken signal of being interested in him. Part of her, however, knew that the way he was behaving was wrong, and worse still, part of her was ashamed that she had refused to acknowledge it for so long. “Yes.”

“Yasmin, please,” he murmured, shaking his head as though in terrible pain, and reaching for her free hand, which he held as though it were made of glass. Her other hand was on her lap, tightly clutching the phone she had bartered from a now-deceased fellow diner in the bathroom. “The truth is… being with you scares me. But not being with you? That terrifies me. I don’t… I can’t possibly… how could you…”

Yaz let go of him and got to her feet as a familiar whooshing, groaning sound filled the room, and the Doctor’s TARDIS materialised between the tables beside them. The Master’s entire demeanour changed at once; his anguish fell away, and he scowled across at her with absolute hatred, looking her up and down with disgust.

“You think she’s going to want you back?” he snarled with contempt. “You think after everything you’ve done and seen with me, she’ll take you back?”

“Yes,” the Doctor said quietly from the doorway of her ship. Yaz couldn’t bring herself to look at her; she got to her feet with a sense of numbness and headed towards the safety of the TARDIS, desperate to put as much time and space as she could between her and the Master. “Yes, I will.”

“You’re welcome to her,” the Master spat. “She’s a pathetic thing, anyway. Ask her about Omega-Delta Seven. Ask her about-”

“That’s enough,” the Doctor said firmly, her voice low and commanding. “I think you’ve done enough.”

Yaz stepped over the threshold of the ship and let out a long breath, sagging against one of the columns and closing her eyes. She was dimly aware of the conversation continuing behind her, and then as the doors of the ship closed and the Doctor crossed to the console, Yaz finally allowed herself to lose control, beginning to hyperventilate.

Slumping to the floor of the ship, she buried her face in her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs, starting to sob as the reality of the previous few months settled over her. The mere mention of Omega-Delta Seven made her feel sick to her stomach; she still recalled the way she had fallen to her knees and dry heaved in the dust after she’d done what she’d done; still remembered the Master’s disdain for her perceived weakness; still remembered the feeling of his boot in her side as he’d nudged her, none too gently, back to her feet.

There were more memories too; memories almost as bad, and acutely painful in other ways. She still remembered the taste of his mouth and the feel of his skin against hers; still remembered the first time he’d hurt her outside the bounds of what he’d asked permission to do; still remembered the first time he’d whispered softly and sweetly that it was her fault as he’d cried and held her close, reassuring her again and again that he hadn’t meant to do it.

Something soft and warm was draped around her shoulders, and Yaz flinched until she caught the familiar smell of engine oil and beeswax, and realised that the Doctor had placed her coat around her. Clutching the fabric closer to herself, Yaz continued to sob, and she was only dimly aware of the Doctor taking a seat on the floor beside her.

“Do you want to talk about it?” the Doctor asked quietly, making no move to bridge the space between them, and for that Yaz was grateful; the prospect of physical contact was too much to bear right now.

Yaz shook her head.

“Do you want to go back to him?”

Yaz shook her head harder.

“Do you want me to get you far away from here?”

Yaz nodded emphatically, still refusing to look at the Doctor. She couldn’t; couldn’t stand to see the disappointment and betrayal on her friend’s face.

“Do you want a custard cream?”

Yaz bit down on her lip and then nodded emphatically again.

“Alright,” the Doctor said with tangible relief, getting to her feet and heading back over to the central console. A few seconds later the ship lurched as it pitched them into the vortex, and the Doctor returned to her side, taking a seat beside Yaz and pressing a biscuit into her hand. Yaz took it wordlessly and began to munch on it with gratitude, the sugar lending her the energy to finally lift her head and look at her friend.

The Doctor’s face was unreadable. She looked both intrigued and appalled by Yaz; concerned and conflicted and horrified all at once. Yaz couldn’t blame her; she had little doubt that the things she had done would have got back to her friend, and she felt a hot rush of shame at the thought of some of them, and what the Doctor might say or do about them. The disappointment in the Doctor’s gaze made her heart ache uncomfortably, and Yaz hung her head again.

“I’m…” Yaz began, her mouth still full of crumbs. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For everything.”

The Doctor nodded, then said slowly: “Going to need more than that.”

“I…” Yaz blinked hard, looking back up at her, disconcerted by the statement. “I…”

“Yaz, you betrayed us,” the Doctor said in a low, sorrowful voice. “You’re the reason Ryan lost his leg. You’re the reason Graham refuses to leave the house. You broke us.”

“I thought…” Yaz’s throat closed up as she was reminded of their fateful trip to Daniel Barton’s party, her choice, and the terrifying, violent gunfight that had ensued. She could still see Ryan’s face as he’d realised what she’d done them; could still smell the ferrous tang of the blood that had poured from where his leg had once been. “Doctor, I thought…”

“What? That you’d come back and everything would be alright?” the Doctor asked in disbelief. “That none of that would matter?”

“But you…”

“I saved you, Yaz,” the Doctor got to her feet. “That doesn’t mean I forgive you. And it certainly doesn’t mean I trust you… or like you very much right now.”

“But…”

“How do I know this isn’t a trick?” the Doctor asked bluntly. “How do I know you’re not going to stab me in the back, literally or metaphorically?”

“You…”

“What happened on Omega-Delta Seven?”

Yaz closed her eyes and shook her head, unable to find the words.

“Well,” the Doctor said coldly. “I’m sure you remember where your room is. Any funny business at all, and I won’t hesitate to lock you in. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

* * *

_A barren planet, marred by war. The local people had been pleased to see them at first – until they’d realised who the Master was, and then they’d been afraid._

_The little band of survivors had dwindled. The sun was beating down, harsh and unrelenting._

_Laughing, the Master gave her a command._

* * *

Being alone again was intoxicatingly overwhelming. For Yaz, who had not been able to enjoy the relative solitude of her own company – save for short, five to ten minute bursts – in over six months, the silence seemed deafening, and she wondered, as she towelled down her hair and perched tentatively on the edge of what had once been her bed, whether she would ever take it for granted again. She looked across the room to the mirror on her wardrobe, which showed her a version of herself that – even now it was stripped of her ridiculous gown and unpleasant makeup – did not much resemble the person she had once known so well. Now devoid of its camouflage, there was the lingering ghost of a black eye staining half of her face a mottled shade of green; her body seemed far more angular than she remembered, and her ribs ached dully from an incident several days prior in which she had – of course – been at fault and provoked the Master’s temper. Sighing and allowing her shoulders to slump as she dropped her towel rebelliously onto the floor, she tried to tell herself that such a fact was simply untrue, but she had been so conditioned into believing all that the Master said that it made her head ache to attempt to counter the mere ideology of it.

She sat on the edge of the bed for a long while, her wet hair tumbling loosely around her bare shoulders and sending rivulets of tepid water across her skin, dripping into her bra and onto her grey joggers. She stared unseeingly at the towel crumpled up before her, until finally she lurched into motion and snatched it up, returning it to the bathroom and hanging it with obsessive conscientiousness on the towel rack and ensuring it was perfectly perpendicular before padding back to her room and pulling on a large, outsized t-shirt and hoodie and laying back on her bed, enjoying the space afforded to her now that she no longer had to share with another being.

As she stared up at the constellations picked out in tiny lights above her head, she allowed her mind to drift back to the Doctor’s words. She supposed it was reasonable for the Time Lady to be wary of her; Yaz couldn’t blame her for that. After what she’d done, the Doctor was entirely right to mistrust Yaz’s words and her actions; entirely right to threaten her with imprisonment of one variety or another. And yet even now, her breathing began to accelerate as she remembered what the Master’s ideas of such things had entailed; as she thought of his casual cruelty as he’d locked the door to her bedroom without warning, and how he’d laughed as she’d rattled the handle and screamed to be released. But she also thought of the other side of him; the side that had then opened the door and let her fall into his arms; the side that had murmured to her softly that he was sorry and he hadn’t meant it; and the side that had showered her with affection and praise and attention and all the things she had so desperately craved.

Yaz had never meant to fall into his arms at all; certainly not then, and not while investigating Daniel Barton. But he’d been charming enough; attentive; funny; just the right side of shy; and when he had been O, he he’d been dorky in a way that endeared him to her irresistibly. When he’d revealed his true identity, she hadn’t understood the Doctor’s horror at first… until she had, with crashing, damning terror, but as she’d watched Ryan slip into unconsciousness and heard Graham screaming foul things at her, the Master had taken her by the hand and whisked her away, and she hadn’t stopped running since. She’d never explicitly _chosen_ him; she’d chosen O, only to find that he didn’t exist, only the Master had seemed to consider his misplaced loyalty a declaration of fealty all the same. He’d thought Yaz to be enamoured with who he was, and so he’d murdered and tortured and plotted his way around the universe with her in tow, refusing to let her leave, until they’d arrived on –

Her mind flinched away from the name of that particular planet and what had happened there. Like a record skipping, her brain jerked reflexively away from the recollection of it, and the aftermath; the flowers and the wine and the expensive gifts and the soft, murmured words of apology. She’d bought it; she’d been stupid enough to buy it, because yes, this man was terrifying and megalomaniacal and homicidal, but he’d made her feel special once, and he was – in a perverse way – making her feel special again. She’d set her heart on changing him, but when it had become obvious that it was an impossibility, she’d not truly felt fear; not at first. No, that had come later; later when the ‘one-off’ had stopped being a ‘once’ and become the first of uncountable repeat performances as the Time Lord lost all vestiges of control; later, on Omega-Delta Seven, when he’d –

_Skip. Skip. Skip._

Yaz closed her eyes and pressed her trembling hands to her face, wanting nothing more than to find the Doctor and try to make her understand, but also knowing that trying to do so would prove fruitless. This wasn’t something that could easily be fixed. Yaz’s own selfishness had shattered into dust all that the four of them had once built, both on this ship and back in Sheffield, and now the only cure for that – she hoped – was time. Time would surely heal all, or at the very least allow bridges to be built and old wounds to be patched up. Wouldn’t it?

There were some wounds, Yaz knew, which would run so deep that she expected to never be forgiven. That thought made her heart ache uncomfortably, but it was an irredeemable fact. Apologies and patience would not grow Ryan’s leg back. It wouldn’t bring Graham back to the TARDIS, or relieve him of the traumas that he had witnessed thanks to Yaz’s own selfishness. But perhaps… perhaps she could speak to them both. Perhaps she could try to help them understand.

Pulling the duvet and blankets over herself, Yaz repeated that hope to herself, time and time again, until finally sleep claimed her, and she fell into an abyss of nightmares.

* * *

_“Yasmin,” the Master said sweetly. He seemed entirely unbothered by the scorching heat. “Yasmin, you don’t want to disappoint me, do you?”_

_“No,” Yaz mumbled, her jaw still aching from the last time she’d disappointed him._

_“Good girl,” he beamed at her, but the gesture was undercut with malice; it oozed out of his pores and across the space between them like oil, viscous and sticky and suffocating. “Go on then. Do it.”_

_He held out his hand to her, and glinting in it, silver and black –_

_“Please,” a small voice asked. “Please, don’t, please-”_

_“Go on, Yasmin,” the Master urged. “Don’t let me down…”_

_She reached out, out, out…_

* * *

Yaz awoke screaming, the taste and sound of her own terror thick in her throat as she sat bolt upright in the darkness, the covers clinging to her like disembodied hands in the gloom as she twisted and thrashed. The door to her bedroom crashed open and the Doctor stumbled over the threshold, sonic held aloft like a weapon, and Yaz felt a crackle of _something_ pass across her skin, flickering and sharp and lightning-fast.

“What?” the Doctor demanded, and it took Yaz a moment to realise the Time Lady was wearing comically old-fashioned pyjamas. “What are you screaming for?”

“It was… it was…” Yaz shook her head, unable to say the words aloud. “Nothing. Nothing. Just a bad dream.”

The Doctor hesitated, eyeing her suspiciously.

“You’re telling the truth,” she said after a moment’s consideration. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

The Doctor arched an eyebrow in surprise. “You are. That’s…”

“What?”

“Surprising.”

“Still expecting a trap?”

“Quite honestly, yes.”

“Don’t worry,” Yaz said bitterly, tugging the covers back around herself and trying to ignore the way they stuck to her sweat-dampened skin. “He hasn’t stuffed me full of explosives and sent me back to you.”

She wanted to say: _but there’s so much else I need to tell you._

She wanted to say: _please let me explain._

She wanted to say: _please don’t leave me alone again._

Instead, the Doctor cut in across her. “Good,” she said curtly. “Goodnight.”

She was gone before Yaz could even shape her thoughts into coherent sentences, the door swinging shut behind her and plunging Yaz back into a state of darkness so deep that it seemed like sensory deprivation.

“Well,” Yaz said to herself in a small voice. “So that’s how it’s going to be.”

* * *

_“Go on,” the Master wheedled. “Be a good girl for me. You know what happens when you’re a good girl.”_

_Yaz dithered, clenching and unclenching her hands into fists at her sides as the Master held his hand out to her._

_“Or…” the Master whispered. “You_ could _let me down… but we both know you don’t want to do that…”_

* * *

The nightmares, and Yaz’s nocturnal screaming, soon became commonplace. By the third night, the Doctor stopped concerning herself with such matters; in the daytimes, however, she insisted on keeping Yaz in reasonably close proximity to whatever she was doing, whether that was tinkering with the circuits under the console or weeding Allotment Eleven; rearranging the shelves in the library or cleaning the swimming pool filter.

To start with, Yaz was merely content to sit and watch whatever the Doctor was doing. She would remain stubbornly silent, and the Doctor seldom acknowledged her, and so instead she simply observed the Time Lady as she worked. It was different to how the Master did things; he was far more impatient; far more likely to break things if what he was working on didn’t go his way, or he would respond suddenly and violently to some perceived imperfection that he would then blame Yaz for being unable to understand or see. In contrast, the Doctor was oddly still as she worked; her usual manic energy condensed and concentrated on the focus of her attention, the silence that surrounded her heavy, but not oppressive. After a few days of watching, Yaz began to get a feeling for how her friend worked, and by the end of the first week, Yaz felt confident enough to dart across the space between them as the Doctor groped around for a spanner, placing it in the Time Lady’s outstretched hand. There was a beat or two of silence, and then the Doctor muttered begrudgingly:

“Thanks.”

It was a start. The days wore on, and the Doctor began to ask Yaz for a tool or another set of hands; tasking her with holding things or passing her this or that item, and they worked in relative silence, occasionally broken by a half-finished directive or request as Yaz slotted into place around her friend. The amicable atmosphere was fragile, Yaz knew; neither of them referred to the time before, or Yaz’s nightmares. Neither of them alluded to the Master, but just when Yaz thought the Doctor was perhaps beginning to trust her again, there came the question, casual and unsolicited, as the Time Lady adjusted a valve in a corridor wall:

“What happened on Omega-Delta Seven?”

Yaz dropped the collection of tools she was holding, her expression falling. The Doctor emerged from the panel she was working in, took one look at her face, and grimaced.

“Not ready to talk about it?”

“No,” Yaz whispered, willing herself to stop shaking. “Not ready at all.”

* * *

_“Please,” the voice implored again, as the Master thrust his hand towards Yaz insistently, making small sounds which she knew preceded a complete loss of temper. She took the item he was offering her; weighed it up in her hands and tried to push down the feelings of horror and revulsion that were clawing their way up her throat._

_“Good girl,” the Master cooed again. “That’s it… it’s not so bad, is it? You can do this. I_ want _you to do this. You wouldn’t want to let me down now, would you?”_

_He moved closer to her, standing behind her to that his torso was pressed flush against her spine. His left hand settled on her hip, his fingers splaying over the angry purple bruising on her skin which was concealed by her clothing._

_“You know what happens when you let me down.”_

_There was an edge to his words, and the voice began to sob in earnest, pleading and whimpering._

_“Go on,” he urged. “Go on, Yasmin.”_

_He moved away from her, lightning-fast._

_There was a sharp, swift_ thud _, and the whimpering stopped._

* * *

As a measure of trust, Yaz was now permitted to spend parts of her day alone. She supposed she ought to feel resentful of the fact that she was barely in the Doctor’s confidence at all; that she ought to be reminded of her time with the Master, when he had insisted upon her continued presence at his side throughout the day and night. Instead, she felt pleased and proud; the Doctor was beginning to trust her all the more, and Yaz was determined not to damage that trust. She was presently curled up on a sofa in the library, a paperback held carefully in both hands as she read. She turned each page with insurmountable care, unwilling to so much as crease a single sheet of the paper it was printed on, and if she wanted to take a sip of her tea, she tucked a bobby pin into her place and set the book down entirely. It was perhaps laughable how much care she was striving to take, and yet she wanted to prove herself; wanted to show the Doctor that she wasn’t the monster that she thought she was.

As she ploughed steadily on through the novel, Yaz began to realise that she may have made a topical error. A detective story had seemed a good idea at the outset; no romance, nothing controversial, just a good old-fashioned whodunnit. But now, with the presence of a fictional controlling fiancé and fictional police officers, she instead found her chest aching with each chapter she progressed, missing her old job and her old life and her family.

She wondered how long it had been for them since they had last seen her. She knew, theoretically, that the Doctor could take her back to the moment she’d left; that it would be as though no time at all had passed, but she wondered how long it had been since they’d last been in each other’s presence. She’d been with the Master for months; in that time, she’d been instructed to ignore their texts and calls and eventually they’d stopped coming, and she wasn’t sure she had the strength now to attempt to rebuild that particular bridge, unsure as she was where to even begin. Would they want to forgive her? Would they want to hear from her? She had no idea, and her heart ached at the thought of her sister and parents’ faces if she returned to the flat, a very different Yaz to the one they’d waved goodbye to all that time before. She was a shadow of what she’d once been, and she wondered how long that would take to change.

Yaz had wanted to recover, and so she’d joined the police, in part to thank the woman who had pulled her out of a mental health crisis that had had only one pre-determined destination, or so it had felt. She’d grown stronger and happier; she’d felt her family’s relief and fear as she’d seemed to recover. Only now… now she could feel herself spiralling again in the quietest, darkest moments; when she woke up screaming in the small hours, or when she stood in the shower with her forehead against the glass, wondering whether anyone would miss her if she was gone.

She’d joined the police to make a difference, too. To help women who were what she’d become; to help women who were too cowed by their partners to make their own escape, or unable to do so. She’d joined the police to apprehend criminals; to solve and prevent murders; to eliminate violent crime. Only now…

“What happened on Omega-Delta Seven?” a voice asked from behind her.

Yaz snapped her book shut, hanging her head in resolute silence as she felt the Doctor’s gaze boring into the back of her head.

* * *

_“Come on now, Yasmin…” the Master wheedled, his voice low and seductive. “You know this is what you want, don’t you? To make me happy. To make me proud of you.”_

_The words burrowed into her mind like snakes, curling up in the depths of her brain and taking root._

_“You want that, don’t you? You want me to be proud. You want me to thank you for it, later… you want that, don’t you? Of course you want that… of course you do…”_

_The whimpering had resumed._

_The silver device was growing warmer in her hand._

* * *

The Doctor had consented, albeit with reluctance, to an outing. Not on Earth; that still felt too oddly raw and intimate, as though the entire planet were scarred, in Yaz’s mind, by what had happened there. This was an alien planet with orange skies and rolling hills of lush purple grass. The landscape was punctuated here and there by trees with black bark, Yaz was reminded forcibly of Halloween, and she fought the urge to smile at her recollections of the holiday; at cheap matching costumes she’d shared with Sonya, and eating sweets until her stomach hurt.

“Ryan would like it here,” she blurted, before she could stop herself. She remembered him on their one and only Halloween together; dressed as Frankenstein’s monster with a gorily realistic-looking bolt protruding from his neck, shovelling handfuls of chocolate into his mouth as though it were a competitive sport.

“He would,” the Doctor concurred tentatively, eyeing Yaz warily. “He-”

“How is he? And how’s Graham? I know you… that is… I know you’re… you must check on them, right?”

“He’s… good,” the Doctor began slowly. “I mean, as good as you can expect, having lost his leg. I got him this prosthetic leg from the Lothan – giant centipedes, specialists in prosthetic legs. He’s learning to walk on it, but it’s… it’s hard for him, with his dyspraxia. The whole house is covered in bubblewrap – properly safe stuff, I checked it, not the Kerblam! kind. It’s like you do with babies. It’s sort of funny, but mostly sort of…”

“Sad.”

“Yeah,” the Doctor paused, then continued: “And Graham’s… well, he said he’s got PTS… something.”

“D.”

“What?”

“PTSD.”

“Yeah,” the Doctor nodded in acquiescence. “He’s just… he’s not functioning well. It’s almost… not a _good_ thing that Ryan needs him so much, but it’s giving him something to focus his energy on. Something to keep him going. I think without that, he’d have given up a long time ago. Losing Grace knocked him for six… and then… well, you know he always thought of you as family.”

Yaz felt her eyes fill with tears as she remembered the kind, funny, compassionate man who had taken her under his wing in the same manner he had his grandson. The man who had handed her squashed sandwiches on long trips; the man who had never once failed to defend her from prejudice or outdated ideologies on their travels, even if it meant engaging in the kind of shouting matches he so hated.

“I’m sorry,” Yaz said in a rush. “For what happened that day. For what I did. I know I’ve said it before but… I’m just… I don’t know how to… I want to make things right, not just with you, but with them. I don’t care how long it takes; I want to make it right. I want to make things up to you all, and fix things.”

“What happened on Omega-Delta Seven?”

Yaz shook her head, unable to speak.

“There are some things,” the Doctor said quietly. “That can’t be fixed.”

* * *

_A new voice now; younger, higher-pitched. Begging. Pleading._

_The Master’s words were still weaving their way through her mind, and Yaz wanted nothing more than to act on them. He crossed the space between them again, wrapping his arm possessively around her waist and pressing a scorching kiss to her neck as her hands trembled; her left hand steadying the right as she tried to remember how to breathe._

_“Do it,” he urged, the words thick with desire. “Do it, Yasmin… do it…”_

_Where his lips met her skin, a fire seemed to have ignited. His cool breath across her throat was a sharp juxtaposition; the two together consolidated the words in her mind and her resolve, against her will, hardened._

_“Do it, now…”_

* * *

They were on a beach. The sand was shocking pink and the sky was a glimmering silver, and waves of obsidian-black water crashed onto the shore with caps of white, giving the entire scene a degree of artifice, like a computer-edited photographed intended to look neon-bright. The Doctor was perched on a white deckchair beside Yaz, her trousers rolled up past her knees and her sleeves scrunched up around her elbows as she buried her toes in the sand, heaping more of the substance into a bucket to make a sandcastle. Neither of them were speaking, but the silence was distinctly friendlier now than it was upon her first return to the TARDIS.

“I killed someone,” Yaz said out of nowhere. She wasn’t sure what prompted the confession; perhaps the lack of pressure, or merely the lack of a question. The Doctor hadn’t asked her for several days now; she’d stopped springing it on Yaz as though she might surprise the answer out of her while she made dinner or browsed the internet or helped fix fluid links. Now, the words had fallen from her lips almost unconsciously; the Doctor said nothing, but stopped shovelling sand into her bucket. “On Omega-Delta Seven.”

“I know.”

There was a brief pause, neither of them looking at each other.

“What?” Yaz asked after several seconds.

“I know. Or at least… I guessed.”

“I…” Yaz blinked hard, keeping her gaze firmly out to sea. Somehow, that seemed to make things easier. “So why keep…”

“I wanted you to own up to it. To say it aloud. That’s the first step to… well, to working past it.”

“What do you mean, ‘working past it’?” Yaz demanded to know. The concept alone seemed impossibly ridiculous.

“Well, the nightmares might have been the first step,” the Doctor admitted. “This… this is the second. I’ve been where you are. I’ve… I’ve killed people. My own people, sometimes. I’m not proud of it, but there it is.”

“You…”

“And I see them every night, Yaz. I relive it every single night; every single time I lay down to sleep, I see every one of them, begging with me not to do it. It doesn’t get easier. It doesn’t go away. But you learn to live with it. You learn to reshape who you are around it, even if that part of you never fully heals.”

“Why did you…”

“War, sometimes. Sometimes self-defence, or the defence of my friends. Sometimes to show off. Sometimes – just sometimes – because of spite, or revenge.”

“He…” Yaz’s voice cracked, and she bit down on her lip until she regained a degree of composure. “He made me.”

“I know,” the Doctor said again. “Yaz, I… if I could have stopped you leaving with him, I would’ve. But Ryan needed me… I had to choose…” she reached across and laid her hand on Yaz’s arm, and the physical contact drew Yaz’s gaze across to the Time Lady, their eyes locking. “Yaz, I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“You think you’re the first?” the Doctor asked softly, her voice small and sad. “The first woman whose head he turned, and whose life he ruined? No, there were others. Others I could have – and should have – saved.”

“I don’t…”

“Have I ever told you why I like travelling with humans?” the Doctor asked, but Yaz sensed the question was largely rhetorical and remained silent. “Yes, it strokes my ego; it makes me feel important and special. But it also reminds me of the fragility of life. The importance of living for every moment. And you teach me things about myself and about the universe that I’d never have discovered otherwise. Do you understand that?”

Yaz nodded.

“But the Master…” the Doctor sighed, pushing her hair back with one hand. “He travels with humans to use them. To control them. Oh, his last wife… she haunts my nightmares. He broke her spirit in the same way that he broke yours – and he did things to her that I hope he never dared to do to you.”

Yaz hadn’t the strength to counter that assertion.

“I’m sorry, Yaz,” the Doctor said in a low, fierce voice. “I am. I should’ve come for you sooner… I should’ve got there earlier… I should have saved you. And then we wouldn’t be in this mess, would we? So for that, I’m sorry.”

“Doctor…” Yaz began, her voice trembling. “Doctor, I _killed_ someone.”

“Yes.”

“And Ryan… Graham… you should hate me. You _ought_ to hate me.”

“Yaz, I want you to remember something,” the Doctor closed her eyes for a moment. “Hate is always foolish, and love is always wise.”

“What does that-”

“It means we’re going to work through this,” the Doctor vowed, her eyes meeting Yaz’s again. “OK? Together. We’re going to work through this _together_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 coming Thursday...


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following Yaz's confession to the Doctor, together they try to move on and reconcile her past with her future.

The decision to come back to Sheffield had been Yaz’s. In a fit of idiocy, she’d suggested it over breakfast; it wasn’t until the Doctor had enthusiastically agreed that Yaz had realised that perhaps it might not have been the most sensible idea, and that she might not be warmly received by all of those she’d left behind. While her family would be pleased to see her – or so she hoped, at any rate – the prospect of seeing Graham and Ryan was frightening, and now as she stood on Graham’s doorstep, the Doctor at her side, Yaz wanted nothing more than to turn and flee.

“I know you’re scared,” the Doctor said in an undertone, as though reading her mind. Perhaps she was. “But this is… important. For you and for them.”

“But-”

The Doctor raised her hand and knocked on the door, a chirpy little _rat-a-tat-tat_ that sounded optimistic and upbeat and a thousand other positive adjectives that only served to throw Yaz’s anxiety into sharper relief as she shifted from foot to foot and struggled not to hyperventilate. The Doctor’s hand settled briefly and encouragingly on her shoulder, before darting away as the Time Lady shoved both hands into her pockets in the crisp autumn chill and stamped her feet in a bid to keep warm. Normally, Yaz would be doing the same, but as her anxiety readied her to fight or flight, she found herself overheating; her top sticking to the small of her back as her heart thundered in her chest. After several long minutes, the door was opened, and Yaz sucked in a sharp breath as Graham leant in the entryway and surveyed them blearily.

His hair was long and unkempt; his face was unshaven, resulting in a patchy, grey-streaked beard that added years to his age. He blinked hard in the grey sunlight, as though unaccustomed to it, and his clothes looked crumpled and well-worn; there was a large damp patch on the front of his red pullover, and he dabbed at it absentmindedly as he looked at first the Doctor and then Yaz.

Yaz watched as Graham’s expression shifted from confusion to reluctant acceptance to overt hostility, and he let out a snarling hiss that was so viscerally full of hatred that she took a step back, raising her arms in the universal gesture of surrender.

“You,” he spat, then turned his attention to the Doctor, scowling at her blackly and jabbing a finger at her chest in an accusatory manner. “What the hell do you think you’re playing at, bringing _her_ here?”

“Yaz wants to talk to you,” the Doctor said coolly, as Yaz felt her heart break in response to the loathing in Graham’s eyes as he flicked his gaze over to her. “I’m serving as her-”

“Bodyguard?” he guessed bitterly. “Keeper?”

“Mediator,” the Doctor informed him, her manner entirely unruffled by his aggressive tone. “Can we come in?”

“ _You_ can,” he jerked his head towards Yaz. “ _She_ can’t.”

“Graham, I…” Yaz began, but he let out a bitter yelp of disbelief.

“Oh, it talks, does it? It remembers my name? Funny how things go, isn’t it, because I remember screaming _your_ name just before my grandson lost his bloody leg in a firefight. Or have you conveniently forgotten that? Forgotten how you screwed us over and left us for dead?”

“Graham-”

“Grandad, what’s…” a voice interjected from behind him, and a second later Ryan came into view. He looked older than Yaz remembered – had that much time passed, or was that simply what happened when you experienced as much trauma as he had? She wondered if she too had been aged by her experiences with the Master, then reminded herself not to be so selfish; she fought to keep her gaze on his face and not to flick it down to where his left leg had once been. As he caught sight of Yaz and the Doctor, his eyes only widened slightly; he folded his arms and said with a casual air: “Oh. Hi.”

“Hiya,” the Doctor said brightly, playing the part of her usual ebullient self. “How are you?”

“Yeah, great,” Ryan answered, his eyes fixed on Yaz with mingled curiosity and apprehension. “What’s…”

“I was just asking this thing to leave,” Graham explained, jerking his head contemptuously towards Yaz again. “It-”

“Grandad, don’t be so rude,” Ryan rolled his eyes as he shook his head. “Her name’s Yaz. You know her name’s Yaz.”

“She stopped having a name when she-”

“For god’s sake,” Ryan muttered under his breath, loudly enough for the Doctor and Yaz to hear, then added in a normal volume: “Why don’t you both come in?”

“Ryan!” Graham protested in horror. “How can you…?!”

“It’s my house too, innit?” he noted with a shrug. “And I’m asking them in. I want to hear what they have to say. So move out the way, or I’ll go get me crutch and nobble you with it.”

Graham dithered for a moment and then fell back sulkily, admitting both the Doctor and Yaz over the threshold, although he shot Yaz another filthy look as she stepped into the hallway, trying studiously hard not to touch anything, or even breathe too deeply for fear of causing further offence.

“Come on through,” Ryan said casually, leading them slowly through the lounge. The house was, as the Doctor had noted before, child-proofed in the way that one might expect for a toddler learning to walk; there was bubblewrap covering the corners of surfaces, and anything breakable had been moved to head height. Ryan was limping almost imperceptibly; he kept one hand held out ready to steady himself, but otherwise he seemed reasonably confident, and Yaz continued to fight the urge to stare down at his legs, instead keeping her gaze fixed on the back of his head as they entered the kitchen.

The Doctor plonked herself down in one of the chairs at the table as Ryan took the kettle from its mount and filled it, flicking it on and then turning to look at Yaz, who was hovering uncertainly in the middle of the room, wary of sitting without being directly invited to.

“You look… different,” he said cautiously, as though afraid of what kind of reaction his words might elicit. “Scared.”

“Yeah,” Yaz mumbled, her cheeks flushing. “I… I am.”

“Of us?”

“A bit.”

“Grandad ain’t that scary. He’s just… just sore about things, really. All bark and no bite,” Ryan sighed. “You can sit down. The chairs won’t explode or anything.”

Yaz took a seat tentatively, shrugging her coat off and looking around the warmly familiar kitchen with a pang of nostalgia. As though sensing her gaze, Ryan smiled and snagged four mugs from the cupboard and set them down on the counter with a clatter. “Nothing changes, does it?” he asked, retrieving a teaspoon from a drawer and a jar of teabags from another cupboard. “Except, you know. Everything.”

“Ryan, I’m sorry,” Yaz blurted, unable to keep the words to herself any longer. “I’m so, so sorry. I never meant for any of this…. I never wanted… I didn’t think… your leg… I’m so bloody sorry, I really am, Ryan, and I don’t…”

“It’s fine,” Ryan said easily, much to Yaz’s astonishment. “Really.”

“Ryan, you’ve literally got one leg.”

“Really?” he rolled his eyes, dropping a teabag into each mug and heaping sugar into one that Yaz knew would be Graham’s. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Somehow his blasé attitude only served to make Yaz feel worse; she wanted him to scream and shout or throw her accusatory words and glances like Graham. That was what she deserved; not this honest, easy-going warmth; not the cup of tea he was making her; not the way he was smiling at her like nothing had ever happened.

“The Doc told us what the Master is like,” Ryan said quietly, his eyes fixed on Yaz as he spoke. Unusually for the Doctor, she remained silent; allowing them this moment of relative intimacy. “What he does. You made a bad choice, but he… he influenced you, he lured you.”

“But I wanted… I wanted to feel special,” Yaz mumbled, tears burning her eyes at the admission. “And he…”

“He played on that,” Ryan shrugged, leaning back against the counter and looking at her with concern. “He used that against you. You’re not a bad person for falling under his spell. Whatever he did, it was wrong of him. I don’t blame you for what happened; I just blame him.”

“I blame her,” Graham announced from the doorway, his upbeat tone at odds with the coldness of his words. “A whole lot, actually.”

Yaz’s stomach dropped, and she looked down at her lap and swiped her sleeve across her eyes, ashamed to cry when there were others in the room who had suffered far more than she ever had.

“Anything I can do,” she said tremulously, twisting her hands together. “Anything at all…”

“You could get Ryan a new leg,” Graham suggested. “How about that?”

“Grandad,” Ryan groaned. “Helpful suggestions only, please.”

* * *

As Yaz sat in her favourite sitting room – the one that lay behind the fourth door to the right of the bust of Beethoven opposite the library; the one with navy-blue upholstery and shimmering silver wallpaper – with a mug of rapidly cooling hot chocolate that evening, she felt nothing but a sense of exhaustion.

Graham’s reaction to her had been visceral and full of the bitterness and mistrust she’d expected and which was – if she was honest – entirely justified. He’d never fully allowed her to speak to him properly during the visit; he’d taken his tea and sloped off upstairs, muttering something vaguely familiar-sounding about serpents and flowers. She’d anticipated his anger; she’d yearned for it in a way, wanted to feel cleansed by it, as she sat on the receiving end of the hatred and fury she so richly deserved for her actions and which the Doctor had stubbornly refused to provide. As he’d scowled and groused under his breath and refused to call her by her name, Yaz had felt a bitter sense of satisfaction that this was, at least, her comeuppance; a sense that she was serving her punishment by being here. And yet…

There had been Ryan. Ryan, who had suffered the most of them all, physically and emotionally, in the wake of Yaz’s betrayal. Ryan, who had sat and smiled at her; made her coffee; listened to her, and accepted her apology with grace. Ryan, who had let her explain just enough to confirm all that the Doctor had told him, then insisted that the past was in the past and that he wanted only to think and speak of brighter matters now. Ryan, who had fetched her favourite biscuits from the cupboard, stretching up to reach them and exposing a bright flash of silver where his ankle had once been. Ryan, who had treated her as though nothing had ever happened.

Ryan, who had, by doing so, made her feel worse than she could have anticipated. She’d craved his anger too; expected a dual wave of vitriolic malice from him and Graham. She could have lived with that. She could have withstood that. But for him to act as though she had done nothing at all? It made her chest ache all the more acutely; made her feel all the worse about what she’d set in motion when she’d made her fateful choice.

Her mind flicked to the Master, and all he’d said and done. She knew now that he could be hypnotic; knew that he’d set his sights on her and manipulated her in order to cause the maximum vicarious devastation and pain to the Doctor. And yet knowing that didn’t make the knowledge of what she’d done any easier to bear; it didn’t make it hurt any less, or make her feel any less shame. She’d still made the choice to join him, at Barton’s party; she’d still chosen him over her friends, simply for the thrill of someone and something new, and someone who had seemingly wanted her; not the Doctor, a child of Time, but _her_ ; boring old Yasmin Khan from Sheffield. She’d still allowed herself to be swayed by his charm and flattery and – no, she corrected herself; his manipulation, not that that made it any easier to bear.

Because it was her fault, wasn’t it? All of it was her fault; the pain, the suffering, the trauma. She’d caused all of that in her friends with her own stupidity, and then she’d created her own personal hell to boot; she’d wound the Master up and said and done the wrong thing, and so she’d had to be punished, to be set right, to be improved. Each blow and each stinging insult had been deserved; each bruise and each tear shed were part of her journey to being perfect; necessary evils that would shape her into a woman who was closer and closer to _ideal_. As she’d lain in bed after each explosion of violence and rage, her body and heart aching, she’d told herself that. As she’d sat in hot baths, the Master weeping beside the tub, _he’d_ told her that. As she’d let him do what he’d told her again and again was necessary, she’d closed her eyes and felt her mind leave her body, and she’d told herself, over and over again, that she deserved this; that she needed to be better; that this was what she had earned for herself.

She knew, of course, that such an ideology was wrong; knew precisely what people like the Master, who preyed on the vulnerable, were like. She’d been taught about abuse – for that was what it is; she could no longer flinch away from the term, embarrassed and ashamed though it made her feel – when she’d joined the police, and while she knew that to blame herself was foolish – she had, after all, never asked for any of what he’d done; she’d prayed instead for it to stop, and striven to be better – she felt it was what she’d deserved all the same. Now, she still couldn’t quite shake that feeling. Perhaps not for doing or saying the wrong thing; perhaps not for irking him; perhaps not for failing to live up to his standards; no, perhaps instead she deserved it as punishment for that initial bad choice. She’d chosen the Master over her friends; Ryan had lost his leg; and so the universe had set about ensuring she paid for that decision, in blood and tears and pain.

Such an idea was born of sadness and self-hatred, she knew. It was born of a lack of self-worth and a sense of acute lowness; a feeling born of a complete lack self-esteem and an inherent belief that her life amounted to nothing; a feeling born of the fact that she still believed that she’d forfeited the right to happiness when she’d chosen the man she’d known as O. She wondered what her parents and sister would say if they knew what she’d done; wondered if they’d have welcomed her home with as much compassion and tangible relief if they’d known that she’d executed someone in cold blood, caused her friends’ life-altering injury and acute trauma, and witnessed hundreds of atrocities too awful to name, many of which haunted her in her nightmares each time she went to sleep, which she suffered as a form of penance.

She wondered whether Sonya would have been quite so pleased to see her if she’d known that in Yaz’s mind, she still entertained thoughts of a very permanent form of escape. To carry on living seemed – in her darkest moment – fruitless; without hope of joy or redemption. She would tell herself that, over and over again, until something would happen or she would strive to find some small source of joy to tear herself out of the bleak place she was so wont to mentally roam to in idle moments, and then she would feel foolish and selfish and-

The Doctor stumbled into the sitting room, tearing her out of her thoughts. It took Yaz a moment or two to register that the Doctor was limping badly; that her coat was ripped and stained with a dark, ominous-looking substance, and that her nose was bleeding sluggishly onto her top lip.

“Doctor, what…” Yaz began, as the Doctor collapsed onto the sofa beside her with an audible groan, pressing the back of one shaking hand to her nose and grimacing at the sight of her own blood “What happened?”

“The Master won’t be bothering you again,” the Doctor said, her voice quiet but coldly determined.

“What…”

“He won’t be bothering anyone again; not for a long while.”

Yaz hesitated for several seconds as the Doctor fished a handkerchief out of her pocket with her other hand; a hand which, she now noticed, was stained red at the knuckles. Pressing the cotton square to her nose, the Doctor shrugged her free arm out of her coat, then swapped over, struggled free, and chucked the offending garment onto a nearby armchair, where Yaz could have sworn it began to mesh itself back together.

“What…”

The Doctor shook her head almost imperceptibly, warning her not to ask, and Yaz understood. She knew that look; it was one she saw in the mirror every night.

Yaz leaned over and, before the Doctor could protest, she wrapped her arms around the Time Lady’s torso and buried her face in her shoulder, letting out a long breath and allowing herself, for the first time in a long time, to feel hopeful.

“Thank you,” she mumbled, as the Doctor settled one hand self-consciously on her back. “Just… thank you.”

* * *

“Right,” the Doctor said brightly, crossing the threshold of the TARDIS with Ryan hot on her heels and approaching the console with her usual enthusiasm, practically bouncing from foot to foot. “Where do you fancy going?”

In the corner, perched in her usual seat, Yaz felt a creeping sense of horror at his unexpected appearance. Her fear didn’t stem from the fact that Ryan was here; far from it, if either of them deserved to be here, it was him rather than her; he hadn’t betrayed the Doctor or his friends, and he deserved to see the universe once again. No; instead he served as a tangible reminder of her actions all those months before, and as he followed the Doctor with an air somewhat akin to shyness, it only underlined to Yaz exactly what she’d done when she’d chosen the Master, and what she’d destroyed with her ill thought-out actions. This was what she’d sacrificed for the attention of a man; this was what she’d torn apart for the sake of a few choice words and endearing smiles. A friendship and a deep bond of trust, all eviscerated by her decision to pick the wrong Time Lord, fuelled by her frustration at the Doctor’s stubborn refusal to really _see her,_ or so she’d felt. As her mind flashed back to the party and all that had come after, a lump rose in her throat, hard and painful, and she shrunk back into her chair, seeking to make herself invisible.

Trailing in the Doctor’s wake, his attention seemingly elsewhere as the Time Lady chattered away nineteen to the dozen, Ryan glanced in her direction and beamed from ear to ear at the mere sight of her, which only disconcerted Yaz further.

“Hey!” he said at once, bounding across the space between them with surprising confidence and flinging himself into the empty seat beside her. “The Doc didn’t say you’d be here. I thought it was just gonna be me and her.”

“I can…” Yaz felt irrationally stung by his words; she had the sudden sense that she were intruding on something personal. “It’s fine, I can leave… I don’t… you don’t…”

“Nah, I don’t mean it like…” Ryan shook his head, looking aghast. “No, I just meant… I didn’t know you were gonna be with us. I’m glad you are; it’s almost like the old team back together.”

“But Graham…” the Doctor chipped in, and Ryan sighed sadly, looking across at her with unreadable expression.

“I tried convincing him but… he wasn’t having any of it,” he mumbled, dropping his gaze to his lap. “Said…”

“It’s fine,” Yaz muttered, pre-empting his next words and getting to her feet. Her chest felt tight and uncomfortable, and she felt an overwhelming sense of guilt at the fact that she was why Graham wasn’t here, because regardless of how Ryan tried to dress it up, that was the truth of the matter. “I understand. I’ll erm… I’ll be in my room.”

She walked away before either of them could say another word, tears stinging her eyes with every step she took.

* * *

“Knock, knock,” a familiar voice said from the door to her room, and Yaz raised her head enough from her pillow to look in the speaker’s direction. Ryan was stood in the doorway, dressed in a bright red t-shirt with a Mickey Mouse silhouette on, and he was wearing a pair of matching Mickey Mouse ears which were decorated to resemble Star Wars droids. He was smiling nervously, and swinging a brown paper bag adorned with the Disney logo self-consciously from one hand. “Can I come in?”

Yaz’s eyes were red and sore from crying, and her head was starting to pound, but she nodded tersely all the same, sitting up a little more as he entered her room and plonked down at the end of the bed, setting the bag halfway between them as she tucked the duvet around herself like a shield.

“So, in case you hadn’t guessed…” he began, gesturing at his shirt and ears somewhat self-consciously. “We went to Disneyland. I think the Doc was a bit disappointed that it was a kinda tame destination, but she _did_ say it was my choice, and I know you’ve never been, so I thought we could go together, but…”

Yaz stared resolutely at the bedcovers, refusing to make eye contact, and Ryan lapsed into silence for several seconds, before carrying on in the same sunny tone.

“We got you some stuff. Next time you need to come with us though… there was so much food we couldn’t bring back because it would’ve melted or gone all sticky or whatever. So I got you…” he tipped the contents of the bag onto the duvet with a flourish. “Err, a Mickey pretzel, some churros, and whatever that M&M covered thing on a stick is. I think it’s a kind of chocolate-y marshmallow-y thing; we checked and it’s not got gelatine in it, so you can eat it. And…”

He held up the last item, which was a pair of Mickey ears covered in soft, blue-grey faux fur, topped with a little chef’s hat and whiskers. Yaz felt a sudden rush of affection for him as he ran his thumbs over the fabric, and she resisted the urge to hold her hands out for them, child-like.

“You remembered,” she breathed, and Ryan beamed, visibly pleased by her reaction.

“That’s not all, look at this…” he flicked a tiny switch and the little chef’s hat lit up, revealing a silhouette of a tiny rat holding a saucepan. The gift was so thoughtful and well-meant that Yaz couldn’t help it; her eyes filled with tears, and she leaned across the space between them and folded Ryan into an awkward hug, burying her face in his shoulder and starting to sob.

“Hey,” he said gently, patting her back in a reassuring manner. “Don’t cry, Yaz.”

“Why – are – you – being – so – nice?” Yaz managed, clinging to him all the more tightly and ignoring his request. “It’s all my fault… your leg… if I hadn’t been so…”

“People make mistakes,” he shrugged, lifting her head up and down as she wept. “Not a big deal.”

“But I… it was… how can you…”

“Everyone deserves a second chance, Yaz,” Ryan gave her a quick squeeze, then gently disentangled himself from her embrace so that he could smile at her in with encouragement. “Including you. Now, are you going to keep crying, or are you going to put the ears on?”

* * *

They fell into an easy pattern as a trio. The Doctor led the way, Ryan stomped along after her, and Yaz trailed along behind them both, feeling pathetically grateful to be included at all. After her first missed trip to Disneyland, Ryan convinced the Doctor to take them back – possibly to be altruistic, and possibly to try more of the culinary offerings – and they finished their day out feeling buzzed on sugar, and also slightly nauseated from the lethal combination of rollercoasters and too many sweets.

After Disneyland was a world that seemed to consist entirely of flowers, and then another where the people were made of semi-transparent jelly, so that they wobbled slightly as they moved, the blue light of their twin suns casting strange patterns through their heads as they spoke and giving the entire planet a vaguely underwater hue. There was planet after planet, trip after trip, but all of them free of the dangers that they’d once so enjoyed chasing after; all of them were carefully risk assessed as being safe, as though the Doctor was seeking to child-proof the universe for the sake of her friends.

It was somewhere between frustrating and a relief for Yaz, who both yearned for and mentally flinched from the prospect of a dangerous scenario; wondered how her friends might react to her in such a situation; and wondered how her brain and body would deal with such a spike of adrenaline, when any loud noise was still enough to tip her into a panic attack. She wasn’t worried about the Doctor’s ability to keep them safe; instead she mentally shuddered at the thought of her friends looking at her with mistrust, although there was no reason for her to betray them now; she knew exactly where she ought to be, and that was with them. There was no ‘better offer’; no charming-seeming man or woman to turn her head. All she wanted was to travel, and spend time with her friends.

Well, to travel, and to make her peace with Graham. She knew it was a pie in the sky kind of dream; knew the chances of it happening were slim to none. According to Ryan, who recounted their conversations with a kind of cheery frankness that Yaz knew concealed his true hurt, Graham was still refusing to come anywhere near the TARDIS while Yaz was aboard; was still furious that Ryan was doing so; and was still refusing to refer to Yaz by her name. Yaz suspected that was the very least of it, but Ryan had some tact, and so she was spared the ins and outs of it; instead, the details were sketched out loosely and that was enough for her.

Yaz was unsurprised, but still, each time Ryan stepped into the TARDIS alone, she felt a tug of disappointment, as well as a small flash of relief that she wouldn’t have to face someone who openly loathed and mistrusted her. She couldn’t blame Graham for how he felt, and while she wanted to make amends, part of her was also frightened to do so; frightened to take that first step and try to remind Graham that she was still, despite what he seemed to think, the Yasmin Khan he’d once looked upon as a surrogate granddaughter.

Or was she? She wasn’t sure about the matter; some days she felt her old self, and other days she looked back on photographs of who she’d been before the Master and felt only numbness; numbness and the blankness that came with a complete lack of recognition of the bright-eyed, naïve young woman she’d been. She hardly knew that person; Before-Yaz and After-Yaz seemed like two entirely different entities, and she could hardly reconcile the two together into who she was now. While the marks that her experiences had left on her skin had faded, her memories still felt raw and acutely tender, and she struggled to move past that on some days until the Doctor brought her a cup of tea or smiled at her or offered her a custard cream, drawing her out of the past and back into the present. Yaz was grateful for that, of course she was, but the Doctor couldn’t be there all the time, and there were still moments of darkness and terror; still moments when she awoke gasping for breath with her pyjamas plastered to her sweat-soaked skin, lost in a nightmare of the past.

Would those moments ever fade, Yaz wondered? Or was this who she was destined to remain, now and for always?

* * *

There was something unusual about Ryan’s entrance into the TARDIS today. He was walking with considerable effort, as though being held back by something out of view, and he was accompanied by a sour, muttered stream of complaints. As he crossed the threshold, Yaz’s eyes widened as she realised the source of both of these oddities was Graham, who Ryan was towing by the hand and who was scowling darkly around the room, as though the TARDIS itself were some kind of portent of doom.

“Grandad, play _nice_ ,” Ryan implored, slamming the door shut behind Graham and leaning against it with his arms folded, leaving his grandad stood halfway between him and the Doctor, who was stood, frozen in surprise, at the console. “Come on, just give ‘em a chance… for me, yeah?”

The Doctor shook her head hard and then lurched into motion, approaching Graham with a wide smile and clapping her hands down on his shoulders, which caused him to flinch as though he’d been physically injured.

“Good to see you,” she said warmly. “Even under duress.”

“I ain’t travelling with her,” Graham said viciously, nodding his head in Yaz’s direction, and Yaz hung her head, trying to look as small and unthreatening as she could manage, which she was sure was still insufficient to reassure Graham. “Just for the record.”

“Well, it’s with her, or it’s not at all,” Ryan reminded him loudly. “Those are the conditions.”

“Not at all is fine by me,” Graham asserted, turning back to the doors with visible relief, but Ryan only arranged his arms and legs akimbo to block his grandfather’s exit route, and affixed him with a stern stare. “Ryan, don’t play silly buggers with me, son.”

“Give her a chance.”

“Not on your life.”

“Give her a chance,” the Doctor echoed, and Graham looked directly at Yaz.

The venom and anger in his tone was unsettling, and she wanted to look away but instead forced herself to hold his gaze. It burned into her, white-hot and blistering, and Yaz felt more vulnerable than she had in weeks, as though Graham were seeing into the depths of her soul and was about to pass judgement on her. She could see flashes of longing and hurt in his expression, underneath the layers of fury and bitterness, and she wondered whether that would ever be enough to reconcile them; she tried to put all of her regret and contrition into her own gaze, and after several long seconds, Graham nodded once and looked back to the Doctor.

“Fine,” he muttered. “Fine. Just don’t expect me to speak to her."

“Baby steps,” the Doctor enthused. “Baby steps.”

* * *

Yaz hadn’t counted on how baby-like the baby steps might be. That first trip was awkward and stilted; she felt as though she were back to being a child, having to relay any communications for Graham to Ryan, who would then turn to his grandad and repeat the entire message verbatim. It was an entirely one-directional cycle; Graham’s initial response to her attempts at conversation contained two words with a total of seven letters, after which the Doctor vetoed any further chit-chat on his part, and so they lapsed into a one-sided agreement which only made Yaz feel all the more self-conscious; she could have lived with Graham’s fury, but the stony silence was worse.

The second trip was little better; the third was disastrous; and Yaz struggled to wipe the memories of the fourth from her mind. If anything, Graham’s anger towards her only seemed to be intensifying; by chatting and smiling with Ryan he seemed to think that she was failing to show appropriate remorse and deference for what she’d done, and he stared at them with coldness if they dared to laugh. 

It was, in many ways, like being back at school. There, she’d grown accustomed to the cold shoulder; to overtly hostile stares; to looks of contempt and muttered asides. In many ways, that was how she coped now; she allowed her mind to regress to a more straightforward time, ignored Graham’s general demeanour of furious loathing, and tried to get on with things as best as she could. And yet… it stung. It stung to see this man, who she had once felt so comfortable with, recoil from her; step away from her; go out of his way to avoid her. She could try to pretend that it did not, but it did.

Trips five to eight were an unmitigated disaster, and trip nine culminated with Yaz bursting into frustrated tears in the heart of New York’s Central Park, storming away from the group as a stinging winter blizzard lashed at the exposed skin of her face.

“Yaz!” the Doctor called after her, as Yaz strode away from the Bethesda Fountain in the general direction of Fifth Avenue, her hands thrust deep into her pockets and her shoulders hunched as she silently wept. “Yaz, he didn’t mean it!”

“I did,” Graham countered, loudly enough to reach her, and Yaz swiped one gloved hand across her face, ignoring their words and the biting cold as she headed back to where she thought they’d left the TARDIS. She had little doubt that they’d follow her, and she supposed she should let them. If Graham wanted to accuse her of spoiling the day then perhaps he ought to look at his own behaviour; perhaps he ought to look at how he spoke about her, and the things he said, all of which were intended to antagonise. She was trying, after all; she was being as polite and as pleasant as she could manage to be in the face of such hostility, and all that she was receiving in return was bitterness and spite and cutting comments.

She kept up her brisk pace, jogging across the street and ignoring the loud, furious cacophony of horns that ensued, resisting the urge to flip off the drivers who took umbrage at her behaviour. As she reached the far pavement, there was the sound of another, much louder horn, and the squeal of brakes, and Yaz turned in time to see a van skidding towards Ryan, who was frozen, stricken, in the middle of the nearside lane, the Doctor and Graham still safely on the opposite side of the road.

Yaz reacted instinctively; she darted back out into the street with both arms outstretched, seized hold of Ryan’s jacket, and hauled him towards her, out of the path of the vehicle, which finally came to a halt where Ryan had been stood milliseconds before. The driver began to curse loudly and vociferously as Yaz tumbled backwards onto the snowy tarmac of the pavement, Ryan landing awkwardly beside her and adding to the chorus of oaths.

“Ryan!” Graham shouted in panic, jogging across the road as the Doctor held up the psychic paper and stopped the traffic with an apologetic shrug, ignoring the irate drivers around her until Graham was safely stood beside Ryan and Yaz, and then ambling over to them.

Yaz because increasingly aware of a hot, throbbing pain in her left arm, and her bum was stinging painfully where she’d landed on it. Her gloves had both ripped across the palms, and the skin beneath was red-raw and grazed, embedded with tiny specks of grit and dripping with grey, sludgy snow.

“M’fine, Grandad,” Ryan muttered, pushing himself upright and letting out a shaky laugh as he gestured to Yaz. “Thanks to SuperCop here.”

Yaz pulled herself into a sitting position with her right arm, wincing as she tried and failed to straighten her left.

“What…” the Doctor began, but Yaz shook her head impatiently.

“I’m fine,” she mumbled, trying to ignore the fact that the pain was beginning to radiate from her forearm to her shoulder. “I’m fine, really…”

“You saved Ryan,” Graham said numbly, addressing Yaz with stupefaction, and she blinked at him in surprise. “You… you pulled him out of the way.”

“Well, duh,” Ryan rolled his eyes at his grandad’s statement. “She wasn’t gonna let me get pancaked, was she?”

“But you…” Graham looked between the two of them slowly before his gaze came to rest on Yaz, his eyes wide and disbelieving. “You… thank you.”

Yaz continued to stare mutely at him, afraid he might be joking.

“Yaz, thank you.”

Graham offered her his hand, and she stared at it in silent confusion for a moment, unsure whether it was some sort of trap; she felt a sudden sense of suspicion that he might be about to shove her under a passing cab.

“I mean it,” he asserted, his tone gruff, and she realised that his eyes were wet with tears. “Yaz, thank you.”

Yaz inhaled deeply.

She forced herself to smile.

With gratitude, she took Graham’s hand.


End file.
